Hedda Sterne: A Virtual Connection
Nancy Natale tells a captivating story about how a comment on her blog led to a real life meeting with Veronique Lindenberg, the niece of painter Hedda Sterne. Lindenberg's first hand account of Sterne is as fascinating as are the images from the Hedda Sterne retrospective that accompany the post.
Artists’ Bookshelves
Books say a lot about their owners. Lisa Pressman writes: "Whenever I am visiting a house or studio I usually find myself at some point in front of the guest's bookshelf having book envy." Her series of posts looks at painters' libraries. Make sure to checkout out the entire series: Lisa Pressman Joanne Mattera, Paul […]
Painters’ Table Most Popular Posts: March
March 2011 featured many wonderful painting blog posts on diverse topics ranging from hard-edged abstraction to the Danish Golden age of figure painting and by a mix of established art writers and artist bloggers. Sadly, March also saw the passing of Gabriel Laderman, in my mind one of the most important painters of the last […]
Hedda Sterne (1911 – 2011)
Hedda Sterne’s work always remained fiercely individual, ground-breaking, and difficult to categorize.
Suh Se-ok
Raphael Rubinstein looks at the work of South Korean artist Suh Se-ok. Rubinstein notes that Suk's "late 1950s-early 1960s paintings… anticipate the radical deconstruction of painting" that was to come later in the west. "Suh’s intertwined formations oscillate between representation and sheer mark-making." Where Clouds Disperse: Ink Paintings by Suh Se-ok was on view at […]
Edward Hopper’s Women
Painter Philip Koch begins: "I always come back to Edward Hopper." Koch describes why Hopper's work spoke to him initially and remains a touchstone – the "depth of [Hopper's] emotions came through… clearly in his slowly built up and methodically constructed compositions."
John McCracken: 1934 – 2011
Christopher Knight reports that painter John McCracken died in New York on April 8, 2011 at age 76. McCracken's work achieved a synthesis of painting and sculpture that could, simultaneously, be considered a singular achievement in either medium. "'My tendency,' John McCracken once said, 'is to reduce or develop everything to 'single things' – things […]
John McCracken at Castello di Rivoli
[PHOTOS] – Beautiful installation photos of John McCracken: A Retrospective through June, 19, 2011 at Castello di Rivoli, Turin.
Elizabeth Murray at Pace
Sharon Butler posts about the exhibition Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the '70s at Pace Gallery through April 30, 2011 including an image of Murray's last painting as well as James Kalm's video of the opening reception.
Delicate Beauty: Persian Manuscript Painting
Altoon Sultan reviews A Prince's Manuscript Unbound: Muhammad Juki's 'Shahnamah' on view at the Asia Society in New York through May 1, 2011. She writes: "Many of the images were of battles and bloodshed, but even so, were full of wonder in their details and color." Sultan also share some of her own favorite Persian […]
Peter Van Dyck
Larry Groff interviews contemporary realist painter Peter Van Dyck. Van Dyck comments on the “modernist” influence on his new work: “…I did see people in school whose work had an assertive shape life and I guess I was attracted to that. So, gradually, shape design became (I think) the dominant organizational and expressive force in […]
Bored With Modernism
A must read post from Mario Naves begins: "it’s been a while since Cézanne and, for that matter, modernism have excited me… I’m beholden to modernist precedent. But what’s excited me the past few years isn’t modern at all. It’s newer than all that." Naves' point is serious, it's easy for an artist's historical canon […]
Modigliani (Part Two)
The second part of Nancy Natale's review of Meryle Secrest's Modigliani: A Life summarizes the later half of Modigliani's life. Natale writes: "The true story of Modigliani is tragic and ironic in that his work is so valued today while it was worthless during his life. Secrest's book gives all the details and relates as […]
Eugène Leroy and the Fle(mi)sh Figure
An essay on the French painter Eugène Leroy by Gwenael Kerlidou, a Brooklyn-based French painter as well as Leroy's former student. As Kerlidou describes him Leroy was a "painter of mostly semi-abstract figures in the Flemish expressionist tradition and a humanist in the vein of the late Rembrandt… he avoided both Cubism and Surrealism and […]
Television and Disaster: Vija Celmins
[VIDEO] Painter Vija Celmins discusses her paintings from 1964 -1966 which are the subject of the exhibition Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster on view through June 5, 2011 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Celmins' paintings of the period are "characterized by violent themes such as crashing warplanes, smoking handguns, and other images […]
Howard Hodgkin in San Diego
Sharon Butler blogs about Howard Hodgkin, whose work is on view in the exhibition Howard Hodgkin, Time and Place, through May 1, 2011 at the San Diego Museum of Art. The post includes two videos of Hodgkin discussing his work "including 'After Ellsworth Kelly,' a painting Hodgkin calls 'a fan letter' to Ellsworth Kelly."
David Malek at Rawson Projects
16 Miles of String
Andrew Russeth examines the positive qualities of influence in the work of painter David Malek. In Malek’s exhibition Hexagons at Rawson Projects his work seems to engage in unapologetic dialogues with several system based painters including (early) Frank Stella and Sol Lewitt. However, Russeth remarks, “What once looked logical, rational, and predetermined… begins to look […]
George Nick
Charley Parker blogs the work of painter George Nick. Parker admires Nick's "unapologetically direct depiction of his subjects, whether architectural aspects of Boston, rural landscapes, Venetian canals, simple room interiors or unstintingly honest portraits and self portraits."
George Hofmann – Painting Life
As part of Henri Art Magazine's series on Romanticism, painter George Hofmann recounts his personal experiences as a painter beginning in the 1960's. Hofmann was friendly with both Greenberg and the Color Field painters as well as the Minimalist painters and sculptors at Hunter, where he taught. Hofmann gives a first hand account of the […]